Would a leverage system such as powertec or free weights with a power rack be best for a home gym set up?
depends, best for what? generally free weights reign supreme for most kinds of strength training, and a proper power rack (ie a modular power cage, not a squat rack) will allow you to do almost anything (at most you'll need a bench), but you also have to take into consideration price issues, space, noise, etc, and sometimes training with cable pulleys can be pretty nice as well, since weights only move downwards.
Depending on what your goals are I don't think it's a good idea. As I'm a believer in short, intense and brief workouts for building strength. For building endurance that is another story. Then long, frequent workouts are the way to go in my humble opinion. ---> GoodHeadKick
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On the contrary, if you exhaust the muscles sufficiently to induce hypertrophy in one workout you won't need to exercise them again for 2-3 days.
That all depends on the individuals recorvery potential. If you can recover properly from 2 sessions a day then great you will likely progress faster than some one doing 1 session a day. Sports teams invest a huge ammount of time and money monitoring and optimising how their athletes are recovering. Some people can lift twice a day without over training but most can't, the importance of rest is often overlooked. People think doing more will be better but that's not always the case as overtraining/under recovering can undo all the hard work you put in. Optimising your nutrition, getting plenty of sleep, staying hydrated and having sensible suppliment programme among other things can help to speed up recovery. Some factors like age, hormone levels and how active your job is are also going to affect recovery but will be harder change. There will always be anecdotes about people who train several times a day and such but the reality is that those people are either genetically gifted, have a lifestyle perfect for recovery of are 'using something' to help.
May I ask how you know this? I'm still learning, and my coach tells me that twice (especially if it's a really long session) is counter-productive.
